Mistletoe

Lloyd Gordon said:
One of my neighbors vandalized the mistletoe. There's still a strong growth of Mistletoe. If anyone local wants to give it a good home, pm me. The apple is 52" high (including 17" pot).
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Bloody hell! Was it accidentally vandalized or did the neighbour do it out of spite?
 
If he did not cut the tree itself, only the mistletoe no big harm done.
Mistletoe breaks very easy from natural causes, but regrows quite fast from the swollen part under the bark.
Will be bigger but takes another two to three years till flowering.
 
IMG_20230924_133353330.jpg

6 years old!
 
Wow, your plants are huge! How old are they? Is that one big plant or a few large plants? Also look like some nice Sarr's in the background.
 
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Hi Lloyd.
There are probably 5 plants there, hence why I managed to get berries, they are the same age as yours are, I got some berries at the same time as you got yours. I cut out a fair bit of the centre of the tree to open it up for sunlight and whilst slow growing for the fir 5 or 6 years, as you suggest have really taken off now.
Ahh I didn’t think anyone would notice the Sarrs, as they were so blurry, that’s one of my four in ground bogs in the background, with everything dying back ready for winter.
Picture from earlier in the year.
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Cheers
Steve
 
Well, I planted some more berries on the same tree and it looks like they are taking too. There will be too many plants for the tree to sustain as they grow on so I will need to do some thinning. But I know now how best to grow them from seed, a skill I didn't think I would ever need, let alone be proud to posess!

Cheers
Steve

mistletoe2.jpeg
 
Hi Steve
I would wait some time because sexes are not equally distributed. Your older one with first leafs is in its second year to grow. Another 4 to five years until first berries appear on the females. Sometimes I might guess here in a earlier stage, if it is a male because leafs seam to look here a bit different in the sexes.
I saw a small crap-apple with some dozens adult plants on it and many hundred in various stages. The tree was no more than two meters high.
The gardener of this Botanical Garden used to just cut some back when they grew too dens. Since he retired they felled this tree. But for more than a dozen years I visited this small healthy looking tree every season.
They take better on the younger twigs, and there you could finally even harvest big adult plants while pruning.
 
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Hi Partisangardene

Yeah, I know we have male and female plants and I know I have both on the same tree already as I have berries for the first time this year. Below is a picture of the tree with its present level of Mistletoe inhabitation and I can see another 6 -10 plants germinating already. Do you think that the tree will be able to sustain a greater level of occupancy
tree1.jpeg
?
 
The mistletoe shoots are really easy to knock off but I see there are lots of new offshoots so the plant is looking very healthy. You seem to have left some flowers on, are you trying for apples? I cut them off because it encouraged squirrels to run up the apple tree and knock off shoots from the mistletoe.
 
Lloyd Gordon said:
The mistletoe shoots are really easy to knock off but I see there are lots of new offshoots so the plant is looking very healthy. You seem to have left some flowers on, are you trying for apples? I cut them off because it encouraged squirrels to run up the apple tree and knock off shoots from the mistletoe.
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I was going to let them develop to see how the apples tasted. I'll see if I can come up with a squirrel deterrent.... maybe stick some skewers in the soil..
 
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